The Bertelsmann Scholarship Challenge: How I Got It And,… How I Found It.
A personal enriching experience
It’s been a while since I’ve applied for an Audacity scholarship. I thus received an e-mail saying that I had been accepted into the Udacity technology scholarship powered by Bertelsmann.
Then I was also invited to join the AI Slack community and a link was provided to access the classroom where I could finally start studying the course.
The procedure to follow is therefore to sign up into the class’s website whose link is provided in the email sent by Udacity, then we choose the course and we start studying the eleven lessons.
I also joined other members (students or scholars) in a Slack group created for that purpose. I was able to join this group thanks to an invitation coming from one of the udacity’s moderators . Once done, I introduced myself and met members in the forum. The goal of this group or community is to allow participants to express themselves about the course, to exchange ideas or opinions, to ask questions in order to obtain answers but also, to best help others by answering their questions, motivating them by sharing ideas, advises, etc.
The attitude to follow, in short, is to be polite and respect the code of conduct. Personally, I have not yet had an unpleasant experience on Slack, nor even heard of any complaints or official announcements coming from the moderators of the Slack group concerning some bad misconducts of one or some members.
According to my experience within this challenge, I can describe the Udacity’s student as polite, responsible, ambitious and focused on the course. I got to know members coming from all continents, from various backgrounds and having different ages. I met teenagers who have not yet finished high school, young graduates who are already working and who want a change of direction in their careers and I also met unemployed adults who have a family in charge or not and hope a lot from this competition.
In terms of human relationships, what I have appreciated most is that, when talking with these people, I’ve also learned more about their environments, cultures or countries.
The advice I would like to give not only to my peers but also to participants of upcoming challenges , is to adopt a frank attitude first of all with oneself, then with others. What can seem to be difficult especially when participating for the first time in such competitions or if we are in lack of experience and also from the fact that, coming from various places of the world ,we might have of course, some contradictory beliefs and convictions. If, in one region of the world, there is no problem to freely express feelings, this can be considered as indecent, a nuisance or even considered as rudeness to ask many questions in another region of our planet therefore creating this way some frustrations. To this kind of problem, there was an attitude of a participant in Slack that I admired most and found really encouraging. I do not prefer to publish the posts of my peers but to sum it up, this member expressed the anxiety she felt for not understanding the course well and therefore was afraid to fail. Some would be afraid to act this way thinking this would be misunderstood but on the contrary, this post was much appreciated by many who encouraged her by saying there were many people who were in such a situation. The good thing is that by acting this way, this member not only expressed her fears, but indirectly encouraged many people not to despair .
To sum up, it is better to know and this, despite the level of education acquired,that we are here to learn and if we do not understand something, we should not be afraid to ask many times as much as it is needed.
And another thing that I highly recommend is to take advantage of any advice on various areas given by the moderators and also by members. For my part, I really appreciated the application named “Forest App” recommended by one of the moderators and which allows to stay focused on any given task we are doing, for example studying the course and this helps to not get distracted by something else.
And I also recommend finding good ways to combat stress like having a walk or one hour in a gym every day.
References:
-Udacity
